Kkk: the Kreed of the Klansmen

by E. Haldeman-Julius

All books are shipped Media Mail with Delivery Confirmation. KKS, Little Blue Book.

68 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2006

About the author

In 1889, Emanuel Julius, later known as E. Haldeman-Julius, was born in Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Beginning odd-job work as a young teenager, Emanuel eventually became a newspaper copy boy. An early socialist, he educated himself at party headquarters, reading tracts on freethought, philosophy and economics. In 1906, Emanuel left his home for good, heading for New York City. His self-education continued when a sympathetic librarian at a girls' school in Tarrytown, where he had found work, introduced him to visiting dignitary Mark Twain. Emanuel's first attributed article, "Mark Twain: Radical," was published in a socialist periodical in 1910.

Emanuel worked for a variety of socialist newspapers, including New York Evening Call, Coming Nation, published in Girard, Kansas, the Milwaukee Leader, and the Chicago Evening World. He became editor and briefly acquired the Western Comrade, out of Los Angeles, interviewing Jack London. He met his wife-to-be, Marcet Haldeman, an actress and heiress, in New York City, and followed her home to Girard, Kansas. There he worked for Appeal to Reason, the largest socialist weekly in the country. The pair married in 1916, and legally combined their surnames, at the urging of Marcet's aunt, Jane Addams of Hull House fame. They had two daughters and a son. Haldeman-Julius, with his wife's help, purchased Appeal to Reason and its publishing plant in 1918. By the following year, he had initiated his People's Pocket Series—inexpensive paperbacks later renamed Little Blue Books, to match their appearance. Haldeman-Julius reprinted classics, socialist, radical and freethought literature. Most of the paperbacks contained a bonus page of Emanuel's trademark nonreligious views. Haldeman-Julius also published a variety of periodicals, including American Freeman. By 1925, he launched the Big Blue Books series, publishing such notable authors as Bertrand Russell and Joseph McCabe.

Haldeman-Julius revolutionized the publishing industry, bringing avant-garde authors to the masses. His radical politics, including attacks against President Herbert Hoover, brought him to the attention of the FBI, which he in turn pilloried in print. The businessman further alienated the status quo by publishing Joseph McCabe's allegations of Vatican collaboration with the Axis during World War II. J. Edgar Hoover's 20-year investigation of the publisher resulted in a verdict of tax evasion in 1951. E. Haldeman-Julius appealed the verdict, but was found drowned in his swimming pool later that year. D. 1951.

More: http://www.haldeman-julius.org/

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/cks...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Halde...

http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Ema...

Reviews

[Steve Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, part of the "Little Blue Book" series published by E. Haldeman-Julius from 1919 to 1978, was published in the 1920's as a critique of the Ku Klux Klan.

It has some remarkably well written essays lambasting the Klan for its racism, anti-semitism, nativism, and anti-Catholicism. The authors are largely obscure white men who take up the cause of those that the Klan targeted. Some were Jewish, some were socialists.

One was a brief piece by one of the Jewish authors, Albert A. Rosenthal. After digging, I learned that Rosenthal was a lawyer and poet in Alabama. He included a stunningly good poem he'd written that was inspired by a blind preacher he knew, forced to beg for his sustenance. One stanza describes a lynching. I include it below:

The thoughts of a blind man are colors, and the
dreams of a blind man are colors talking to
silence or breaking to music according to the
number of pink-pinks of copper pennies singing
hosannas against the agate of a beggar's cup.

Some days are the sea-battered gray of rocks,
tipped off with a sky-rocket green of nickels
and hopes that the next will be a dollar and
"God bless you."

Some nights are the liquid-red on velvet of a
high yeller's love croon blending to the melody
of dimes and quarters, and "we'll save our and
not have any babies the first year so we can move North."

And again some nights are the wound-red of
The Savior, and the silence is that of burned
torsos slamming against shared pines, and
the songs of the wind are as empty as an old
woman's arms, as blank as a blind beggar's
eyes remembering many, many things.

The thought of a blind beggar are colors joining
the chime of small coins to a symphony of tears.

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The "Little Blue Books" inspired and educated generations of writers. Louis L'Amour was a fan, as were Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, William S. Burroughs, Jack Conroy, Harlan Ellison and Studs Terkel. They were enormously popular. Admiral Richard Byrd took a collection to the South Pole.

The books contained certain controversial topics, earning Haldeman-Julius a place on J. Edgar Hoover's "Enemies List".

KKK: The Kreed of the Klansman can be googled and found in a digital format online, as can several of the "Little Blue Books". Several universities house entire collections. They can also be purchased on Amazon.